The One You Feed - Mike Scott of The Waterboys

Episode Date: February 25, 2014

This week on The One You Feed we have Mike Scott.Mike Scott is the founding member, lead singer and the lead songwriter of rock band The Waterboys. He has also produced two solo albums, Bring 'em All In and Still Burning.  Scott is also a published writer, having released his autobiography, Adventures of a Waterboy, in 2012.We have been big fans of Mike Scott and The Waterboys since 1985 so this was an exciting interview for us. It's a great way to mark our 10th episode. Hope you like it! In This Interview Mike and I discuss...The One You Feed parable.How our choices create who are.What he learned at the spiritual community Findhorn.How to go back and forth from an interior world of peace to the outer world of show business.Sustaining yourself during storms.The critical role of stillness in finding peace of mind.Ellie Goulding's version of How Long Will I Love You.Inner balance.Details about the new Waterboys record.What music he is listening to these days.What Arthur's Day is and why he wrote a satire about it.How we are the authors of our own lives.What the word spiritual means.Mike Scott LinksMike Scott/ Waterboys homepageMike Scott TumblrMike Scott Amazon PageThe Waterboys Amazon PageSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When shit happens to me, I don't blame it on the outside world. So I'm the author of my own fortune, whether it be good fortune or misfortune. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us today. Our guest this episode is legendary songwriter Mike Scott of the Waterboys. His career in music began in the 70s, continuing to this day with a discography so prolific we can't possibly discuss it in great detail. What we can say is that we are huge fans of Mike Scott and his music.

Here's a snippet of one of his most loved songs, followed by the interview. I wandered out in the world for years While you just stayed in your room I saw the crescent You saw the whole of the moon The whole of the moon Welcome to the show, Mike. We're really glad to have you. Thanks, Eric. My pleasure. Thank you for being a guest. The other thing I want to thank you for is, and words will fall short,

but both myself and my co-host have been really big fans of your music for a long time. And it's meant a lot to me at different points in my life. It's sort of been a consistent inspiration to me in a long time. And it's meant a lot to me at different points in my life. It's sort of been a consistent inspiration to me in a positive way so many different times. So thank you so much for that. You're welcome, Zoot. Okay, so our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it's based on the old parable where there is a grandfather who is talking with his grandson, and he says, in life, there's a battle going on inside of us. And there's two wolves. One is a good wolf, who represents kindness and love and

joy, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents greed or hate, fear, doubt. And the grandson stops and thinks for a second and says, well, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off the podcast by just asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in your work. Well, I like the parable. I don't think it's an absolute truth because I don't think that we're split creatures with a good one and a bad one inside of us. I don't think we're all paranoid schizophrenics, but I think the parable is important because it shows that we have a choice

in how we act in every encounter, in every instance. And by our choices, we create who we are. And I certainly believe that. And I've noticed that outworking in my life for a long time. So I read The Adventures of Waterboy, and we sort of end up at the end of that book right around year 2000. And I know what the band has been up to since the year 2000, musically and all that.

I'm curious a little bit more about where you have been the last, you know, 13, 14 years, specifically if you've been back to Findhorn and what else you've been up to personally. Well, actually, I didn't move back to Findhorn. Findhorn, for your listeners, is a spiritual community in the northeast of Scotland. It doesn't subscribe to any one belief system. There are people there from all different spiritual traditions, but the unifying philosophy would be that spirit or God or the great mystery, whatever name you want to put on it, is inside each of us, and we can access that core part of ourselves and live and make decisions from it. That's the ethos at Fyndhorn.

And I was there in the mid-90s, 1994, 1995. And it was a place that had a profound influence on me. And in the early 2000s, my wife and I went back to live there. We bought a house and I was there for, I think, six years through to 2008. And it was a good experience for me because not only was I living and interacting with the spiritual community, but I was a touring, traveling, worldly professional musician at the same time. So it was a fabulously educational and endlessly interesting experience touring my band from Findhorn. So I'd be going out into the world and doing all these fast activities

and moving through cities, playing concerts to thousands of people. And then after, I would always go back to Findhorn, to this rarefied, almost sacred atmosphere. And that was really good for me, really taught me a lot about how to sustain that atmosphere when I was out in the world. That was the learning that I needed to go through at the time. Yeah, you mention in the book how when you first went to Findhorn, you weren't Mike

Scott, this famous musician, you were just another person there. And I imagine, based on what you're saying, sort of it helps keep that sort of star on one side versus just another person on the other side better in balance. Well, you know, that was a lesson from my first time in Fintorn back in the mid-90s. I didn't need to learn that one again. I'd got that one. No, it was more the challenge for me when I went back to live to Findhorn. Of course, I didn't move back to Findhorn for these reasons. I just moved back actually because my wife wanted to work again in the community as she

had done in the past. And we were a bit fed up being in London at the time. So we thought, all right, why not? So I didn't go for any great benighted spiritual reasons or for a particular challenge. But the challenge that I got was this one of moving in and out of the spiritual community atmosphere into the world, back and forth all the time, and learning how to balance those two worlds inside me. And that was just really great learning. Yeah, I think that ties back well to the theme of the podcast, because I think we all go through that to some extent. We live in a world that is very external focused. And yet for a lot of us, we're trying to live a deeper and more meaningful life. I am pulled back and forth between those worlds a lot. So I think, you know, that that is a challenge we all face. Yours is on an extreme

level, obviously, because those are those worlds are so far apart. Yeah. And you met your wife there at Findhorn, right? In the mid-90s, yes. And so where are you living now? I live between Dublin and New York. Okay. I've got places in both cities.

New York. I've got places in both cities. So one of the things that you just actually used the word in our last piece was sort of, you used the word sustain. And one of my favorite songs of yours is the song called Sustain from one of your more recent records. And what I really like about it, you know, the main chorus is, you know, I've learned how to sustain myself in storms. And I think as I've gotten older, that's, I've certainly gotten better at doing that. Could you share a little bit about how you've learned to sustain yourself? Because what I got from that was really a sense of, and I think it's back to the Fyndhorn theme, right? Like, it's inside of us. It's not something external that we need in order to bring us through things.

Blues are falling like showers of rain. us. It's not something external that we need in how to sustain myself in storms. Yeah, somewhere along the line, I found that the replenishing power was inside me. But I also needed to have the kind of stillness inside me to be able to do that to access that power if I'm confused and I'm running around like headless chicken and I'm stressed and worried about things I can't access those healing holistic parts inside of me that give me the wherewithal to recalibrate myself regardless of what's happening. I need to have stillness. So it's not just finding a sustaining power inside me, it's also being still. That's a crucial thing.

And have you, so you've been out of Findhorn for a while and yet you still sort of go back and forth between the hectic music world and then back to a personal life, have you found you've been able to maintain some degree of stillness when you go back to a world that's not as removed as Findhorn? Oh, yeah, I haven't been in Findhorn for quite a while, and I'm pretty chilled out wherever I am. It takes a lot to stress me out. I'm unpressurable, I'm glad to say.

Oh, that's a good place to be. Yeah. How much of that do you think is attributable to the spiritual practices you've learned, and how much of that do you think is attributable to sort of the maturation process that we all go through as we get older? It's a bit of both, Eric. Probably equal amounts. all go through as we get older. It's a bit of both, Eric. Probably equal amounts. I learned to meditate in the early 90s. I still meditate, not every day now, but that's given me tools, really perception tools that enable me to take a step back from whatever might be happening in a day or in a week or in an event. And that distance is very useful.

Yeah, I think that's a, you know, that's a theme that seems to come up a lot on this show is that ability to sort of step away and learn to observe your mind, just to step back from it and be able to step out of the swirl of emotions and thoughts and recognize that that's not reality. It's a construct that we've put there. So one of the big things that seems to have happened, I don't think it was necessarily big to you, but I think that's why I'm asking is Ellie Goulden recorded a version of How Long Will I Love You that seemed to do pretty well on the charts. Any reaction to that? Oh, I was thrilled.

She was in the top ten for ten weeks, I'm pleased to say. It's lovely to have a hit record. How long will I love you? As long as stars are above you And longer if I can How long will I need you As long as the seasons lead to Follow their plan

It's a beautiful song, and I've heard her version, but no one will ever do it the right way except you in my book. Oh, thanks very much. There have been quite a number of good cover versions of that song, actually. Yeah. Ellie's is the one that's been successful and good for her, but there have been some other good ones as well. In the book, there's something you talk about, and I'd like to see if you could kind of walk us through it a little bit, because I think it's very relevant to what we're talking about. And you start a chapter by describing an Indian hoops dancer and a ritual that he goes through and kind of what that translated to you in your life.

Could you maybe walk us through that? Well, it was in the early 90s. I just moved to New York. I spent two years in New York, 91 to 93. And I went to see the American Indian Dance Theatre. I think it was called the Native American Dance Theatre. It was in an old theatre on 7th Avenue. as I've seen photographs or film of hoop dances. What it is, it's a young Native American who comes out with three wooden hoops and he starts dancing with them.

And as he dances, he's managing to pass them around and over his body in ways that defy the eye. And then he produces more hoops and more and more until he's dancing with maybe two dozen hoops and balancing them all beautifully in various shapes and how he manages to get his body through them as he's dancing i don't know it's a kind of houdini-esque miracle for the eye and i took it i think perhaps it was in the the program the theater production program that what the hoop dancer is doing, what his dance symbolises, is that he's balanced all the different aspects of his life. The hoops each represent different areas or different interests or different concerns in his own life.

And by balancing them, he's demonstrating his mastery of himself. And of course, he's certainly demonstrating his physical mastery of himself. So it's appropriate that it has a correlation to his spiritual or personal mastery of himself. So I was very impressed by that. And for a long time after that, I really wanted to be the hoop dancer in myself. Not that I would go around on a stage with the hoops, but that I would master all the different aspects of my own life. And that gave me a good template to view how I was doing, if you like. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no, really. Yeah, really. No, really.

Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a challenging subject, I think, for a lot of us to balance things. And I tend to be relatively obsessive. So I get into something and I am all the way into that. And the other things around it in my life sometimes can suffer. And as I've gotten older, it's certainly been a matter of how do you strike that balance

and how do you integrate the different parts of yourself? Because I think at that point where they all come together is really the thing that defines us as individuals and our unique contribution is that sort of meshing of all those things. You're in Nashville now, and I think you said doing pre-production on the new Waterboys record. Anything you can share with us about that? Well, I can tell you it's snowing outside my window. But I don't get snowed in because I'm going back to New York tomorrow

and I'd like to make it. I've been rehearsing with a couple of the players who'll be on the record, a great keyboard player called Paul Brown from Memphis and a guitar player called Jay Barkley who was in the last Waterboys touring band in North America a few months ago. So we've been working on parts and developing the songs,

and I'll be back here in three weeks' time to make the record. Making it there in Nashville? Mm-hmm. Can you tell us who's producing it? I'm producing it. Oh, great. Yeah. And will the fellow who fiddles be involved?

Oh, he certainly will. He will, yeah. And do you have a time frame for release? We're not sure. If we can get it out in September, then we'll do that. But I know that recording in March and probably mixing maybe late April and all the cover and promotion to process and set up, I think we might be pushing it for September.

Realistically, it might be January. We're certainly eager to hear it. Will there be a US tour? Oh, there will, of course. Wonderful. Yeah. I've seen you multiple times here and I think I mentioned to you in our email correspondence, my co-host and I met you years and years ago. I had to have been 1990-ish probably and just had a brief conversation. really best friends for 25 years. And when our friendship really started, I think your music was one of the things that we have consistently shared over all these years. So it's special to

have you with this particular podcast also, given that, you know, your music has been pretty central to a lot of things with us. That's lovely to know. Thanks for telling me. Oh, yeah. So you, a piece of music you released over the last year, you had the Yeats record, but you also released a one-off sort of single or satire called Around Arthur's Day in Ireland. Could you tell us about that? Well, Arthur's Day is an advertising event dreamed up by the clever people behind Guinness beer. And what they do is exactly six months after St. Patrick's Day, as if as a counterweight, they announce Arthur's Day when Guinness will be half price at certain hours of the day and everybody will toast Arthur Guinness who invented

Guinness at 17 hours and 59 minutes. Of course, Guinness was established in the year 1759. It's very, very clever. But the reality of it on the streets is it becomes a binge drinking excuse for Ireland and the streets are filled with vomit and piss and drunken people and it's really an awful awful event and the advertising is Ireland's a very small country it's probably hard for anyone in America to understand just how small and colloquial Ireland is and when you have a heavy marketing exercise like Guinness is for Artists, it becomes absolutely inescapable. It's like the Super Bowl multiplied by 10. And Ireland is a country with a big drink problem. I think if Ireland were personified, it might be an alcoholic. And in a country

that has such a problem, everyone in Ireland either has someone in their family or has someone close to them who's an alcoholic or has suffered the effects of alcoholism, and in such a country to have this drinks binge event presented as if it's a national holiday is kind of offensive, and a lot of people, after four or five years of artistry being rammed down our throats by these marketing men, a lot of people got fed or five years of artistry being ran down our throats by these marketing men a lot of people got fed up or pissed as you say in america in britain and

ireland of course pissed means drunk so we don't use that we say pissed off so a lot of us were pissed off and i thought i'm going to write a song about this because i'm going to use the weapon that i have which is my words and i'm going to write a satirical song that tells what actually happens during Arthur's Day and pokes and punctures the lie that this event is all right. So that's what I did. And it got quite a lot of publicity. I'm pleased to say it was mentioned in the New York Times and the Herald Tribune and various newspapers around the world, and along with a similar song written by the great Irish bard and singer, Christy Moore. And the two of us with our anti-Artist Day songs,

I think we created a climate of bad publicity for Artist Day, and it's our hope and a lot of people's that Guinness or their owners, their masters will have realized that's Day is actually counterproductive because it gives them a bad name. So I'm hoping that that's the last of Arthur's Day. But if they announce it again this year, I'll be there with my song. We'll show the world we're drinkers on Arthur's Day Not gentlemen or thinkers on Arthur's Day.

We'll puke in our hands and piss where we stand and we'll fill the A&E wards. We'll binge and minge, talk shite all night in Ireland and our hordes on Arthur's Day. It's very well done. It's a great satire. Thank you. Have you not drank or done anything for a long time? Is that kind of your story? Well, you know, I made friends with Mr. Guinness when I was in my late 20s, and then I became his slave.

And then I decided we would never talk again. That was in 1991 I stopped drinking. I didn't go to AA or anything like that. I just got fed up with it and decided that was it. I wanted my life back. But no, I haven't had a drink since then. Has that been, has it been a challenge for you at all? I mean, you're exposed to it all the time. Nope. I'm lucky. No challenge. Yeah. I've, I've been there too. I think mine might've been, um, Mr. Old Crow and I had a conversation and decided to stop talking, but similar ending. What are you listening to these days?

What sort of music travels with Mike Scott these days? Well, I listen to a lot of new music and a lot of old music. I'm forever listening to music from what I think is the golden age of popular music, from about 1965 to 71. There's no end of magic from that period for me. And in the last few years, I've been listening to a lot of great soul music from that period. James Brown, Sly Stone, Motown, Stax, what we in Britain, Northern Soul,

what we in Britain call Northern Soul music. But I listened to a lot of new bands as well. I like Fleet Foxes, Shovels and Rope, who are a real cool band. They're a duo,

like the White Stripes, but they're a little bit more down home. I like Joanna Newsom a lot. And, yeah, I'm always discovering stuff. I have an iPod full of music to listen to.

Yeah, it's amazing the breadth of music that's available to us these days. It's dizzying, isn't it? It is. Everybody's listening to different stuff as well. In the 60s, everybody was listening to the same things. It was a unified audience, but now we're all in our headphones listening to our own little worlds.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really.

Yeah, really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you think that's overall a positive thing? I just think it is what it is. I can see things that have been lost, but I see things that have been gained as well.

So it just is the way it is. It's just the times. Yep. And fighting against the marching forward of technology is a futile endeavor for sure. Yeah. So within your music, there's a lot of references to spirituality. You've gone to, you know, we've talked a little bit about the Findhorn time and all that. What does the word spiritual mean? Do you have somebody ask you to say what that word means? Well, words are faulty because they, like a snowball going down a hill, they gather ideas to them, and different people have different ideas about the same words, love, God, spirit, all these words have so many different people have different ideas about the same words, love, God, spirit,

all these words have so many different meanings, different interpretations, that I'm loath to add to that by giving yet another. So what I would say is that I think everybody has a spiritual side, everybody is a spiritual being. And we come down into this world, into the world of form, and it's very easy to lose touch with our spiritual selves because we get entranced, or some would say ensnared, by the lure of form, by appearances. Man gets tired Spirit don't

Man surrenders Spirit won't Man crawls Spirit flies Spirit lives when man dies Man seems Spirit is Man dreams

Spirit lives Man is tillered Man dreams. The spirit lives. Man is tillered. Spirit free. What spirit is, man can be. We all still have this other thing inside that can inform and inspire us in a way that is beyond words. And for me, the best thing in my last 20, 30 years has been finding that inside me and learning how to stay in contact with that. And so that's, for me, that's spirituality.

And how do you, what is your method for sort of, I know this is a question that is, there's no good answer for, but what are some of the things you do that keep you in touch with that and remind you to go back to that? Well, I continually observe myself and question why I do things. If I find myself in a situation and I act a particular way, I'll look at that. I don't just blame it on outside circumstances. I know that I'm the author of every action that I take and really if I extend that line of thinking, I'm really the author of every circumstance in my life, because the things that happen to me are the result of choices that I've made and of trains of events that I've set in motion by the things that I've thought and

decided and done. So I'm the author of my own fortune, whether it be good fortune or misfortune. So when shit happens to me, I don't blame it on the outside world and feel like a victim. I think, okay, how did I put myself in the situation where this happened? And that gives me information. And it also is an incredibly empowering way of looking at my life because it means that I'm responsible for what happens and I can change what happens by the way that I respond to things so I keep that as a practice every day so I wouldn't even call it spiritual practice it's just a life practice and that keeps me straight it keeps me aware and awake

and I also remember always that I'm a spiritual being of a human experience and I also believe that we're all God, that we're all really one being, one experience and our sense of ourselves as separate selves is a helpful illusion, because without it, we wouldn't be able to function in a physical world. But it's only an illusion.

Really, there's only one of us here, having a kaleidoscopic experience through billions of selves. And I remember that, and I've had moments in my life when I actually perceive life like that through that lens and I remember those moments and and always keep that as a kernel in my consciousness that I I remember is true yeah I think it's I think an interesting thing along those lines is we we talked with uh uh we had someone else on the podcast who was talking about there's a transcendental world that he has visited where that sense of oneness is really there and then there's a day-to-day life we find ourselves in and that those worlds are not necessarily connected but the remembering of one while you're in the other is really helpful

yeah they're both present both those worlds are present at all times. And it's only by our perception that we move in and out of them. But they're both here. And in fact, the transcendental world is the real world. I always found when I'd be to Fintorn, people would say,

when I'd come back to the city or whatever, to normal life, as you might call it, people would say, oh, you're back in the real world. And I would say, I'd come back to the city or whatever, to normal life, as you might call it, people would say, oh, you're back in the real world. And I would say, excuse me, I've just been to the real world. Yep. So is there, I know you've, you've got a lot of, you're a reader of a lot of different things. Are there any spiritual works or things along those lines? I'm not a big fan of that term, but I don't have a better one that that you have been reading these days or that sort of influenced your thinking? I've been reading Ram Dass's recent book, Be Love Now. I don't know if your listeners know who Ram Dass is, but he's a spiritual teacher. He's been active since the early 70s. He went to India

during that era when lots of people were going out seeking gurus, and he met a guru there who had a profound influence on him, and he spent the rest of his life disseminating the teachings that he received from his guru. And Be Love Now is a beautiful book. And do you find that's another way that you, for lack of a better word, feed your good wolf, is going to books and literature and continuing to sort of refresh those ideas? Well, you know, Eric, I have periods when I don't read any spiritual books at all. Sometimes I'm fooled and I just need to stop breathing stuff in for a few years. When I went back and lived in Findhorn in the early 2000s,

I had three or four years of intense spiritual reading and education. And then for about the next six or seven years, I don't think I read a single spiritual book. I just needed to breathe out for a while. I needed to live what I'd learned. And then in the last year or so, I've started to slowly pick up books again. I'm ready for some new input. Yeah, that is a very profound way of talking about that idea that it's really easy to consume a lot of stuff, but the living of it is really where the challenge comes. Yeah, that's right. I guess I would just wrap up by asking, is there anything that you would want to say sort of

on our theme that you would want to leave us with? Well, I don't get too fixed on the positive side. I think it's good to acknowledge all the parts of yourself. And sometimes it can be really useful

to be angry about something. Sometimes being angry is what needs to happen in a person. I don't mean that you then act abusively towards people or take out your anger on people, but sometimes anger is an appropriate emotion. And sometimes it's all right to be down. Sometimes you have to go through little spells of being down or depressed. I find when I'm hurt or I'm upset or I'm sad, I allow myself to go through that.

Because if I don't, if I kind of push it under, then it's only going to come back up and distort my experience in some way. So I go through all these things. I think it's important to go through whatever is in front of me, whatever I need to go through. I'll go through it, whether it's positive or so-called negative. It's just all life. Or as Randall would say, it's all grist for the mill. Yep. I love that. I love that phrase, grist for the mill. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. I'm excited to hear the new Waterboys record and excited to see you when you tour back through the U.S. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for the interview.

Yep. Take care. Bye. All right. Bye. You can find out more about Mike Scott and the One You Feed podcast at oneyoufeed.net slash Mike Scott. Hey, just when you thought the podcast was over, I'm back to ask you, whether a faithful subscriber or a lucky newcomer, to please go on iTunes and give us a high rating and any comments or suggestions you might have. In return, we promise to never interview anyone with the last name Kardashian.